waters and stopped the illegal arms trade and aid to Baloch rebel groups. In a separate operation, the navy seized and destroyed vessels that were trying to aid the Baloch rebel groups. The army suffered more than 3,000 casualties in the fight while the militants lost some 5,000 fighters as of 1977. After three years of fighting the separatists were running out of ammunition and so withdrew by 1976. Foreign Support India Pakistan asserted India was covertly intervening in Balochistan in the same way it had intervened in East Pakistan before the secession of Bangladesh. India denied the assertions, replying that it was fearful of further balkanisation of the subcontinent after Bangladesh. In retrospect, Avinash Paliwal, in his book My Enemy's Enemy: India in Afghanistan from the Soviet Invasion to the US Withdrawal, cites a junior Indian intelligence officer participant in these operations who recalled that "we gave Baloch everything, from money to guns, during the 1970s, everything". Paliwal further claims that just as Pakistan and India were bitter rivals, so were Iran and Iraq. In the pursuit of their respective rivalries, Pakistan and Iran developed closer relations, as did India and Iraq. Arming Baloch insurgents in Iran and Pakistan was in the interest of both Iraq and India. The militant group Pasthun Zalmay was responsible for a series of bomb blasts and other insurgent activities in Pakistan; it comprised Balochs and Pashtuns and was in direct contact with Kabul as well as with the Indian and Iraqi missions in Afghanistan. As a consequence, relations between Iran and India deteriorated so much that in 1975, Indian diplomat Ram D. Sathe sent a secret letter to the Indian ambassador in Tehran in which Sathe predicted that "it will be a few more days before the Iranians will stridently back the Pakistanis (on Kashmir) ... Personally I do not think we should be under any illusion about this matter. I think Iranians will definitely back the Pakistanis". Iran It was after visiting Iran in 1973 that President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had dissolved Balochistan's provincial government in the run-up to the operation. When the operation was begun, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran and Bhutto ally, feared a spread of Baloch ethnic resistance into Iran. The Imperial Iranian Army began providing Pakistan with military hardware and financial support. Among Iran's contributions were 30 HueyCobra attack helicopters and $200 million in aid. Republic